The latest edition of Skelton was published in the days of Pope, which occasioned some strictures in conversation from the great poet. The laureated poet of Henry the Eighth is styled "beastly;" probably Pope alluded to this minute portrait of "Elynoure Rummynge" and her crowd of customers. Beastliness should have been a delicate subject for censure from Pope. But surely Pope had never read Skelton; for could that great poet have passed by the playful graces of "Philip Sparrow" only to remember the broad gossips of "Elynoure Rummyng?" The amazing contrast of these two poems is the most certain evidence of the extent of the genius of the poet; he who with copious fondness dwelt on a picture which rivals the gracefulness of Albano, could with equal completeness give us the drunken gossipers of an Ostade. It is true that in the one we are more than delighted, and in the other we are more than disgusted; but in the impartiality of philosophical criticism, we must award that none but the most original genius could produce both. It is this which entitles our bard to be styled the "Inventive Skelton." But are personal satires and libels of the day deserving the attention of posterity? I answer, that for posterity there are no satires nor libels. We are concerned only with human nature. When the satirical is placed by the side of the historical character, they reflect a mutual light. We become more intimately acquainted with the great Cardinal, by laying together the satire of the mendacious Skelton with the domestic eulogy of the gentle Cavendish. The interest which posterity takes is different from that of contemporaries; our vision is more complete; they witnessed the beginnings, but we behold the ends. We are no longer deceived by hyperbolical exaggeration, or inflamed by unsparing invective; the ideal personage of the satirist is compared with the real one of the historian, and we touch only delicate truths. What Wolsey was we know, but how he was known to his own times, and to the people, we can only gather from the private satirist; corrected by the passionless arbiter of another age, the satirist becomes the useful historian of the man. The extraordinary combination in the genius of Skelton was that of two most opposite and potent faculties--the hyperbolical ludicrous masking the invective. He acts the character of a buffoon; he talks the language of drollery; he even mints a coinage of his own, to deepen the colours of his extravagance--and all this was for the people! But his hand conceals a poniard; his rapid gestures only strike the deeper into his victim, and we find that the Tragedy of the State has been acted while we were only lookers-on before a stage erected for the popular gaze.[9] FOOTNOTES: